The main issue is the lack of risk.The chances of getting pulled over for intoxication are minimal at best.People take their chances all of the time. Drive around your city at bar close and observe.How many swerving folks do you see?How many police do you see?How many cars are out on the road at 2am (or whatever close is in your town)?I would say it is safe to assume that 50% of all the solo drivers of those cars has drank at least one beer.Drunk driving sucks but people do it all the time. Go sit at a bar and watch how many folks come in, drink plenty of drinks in a short period of time, grab their keys and head out.

I'm not suggesting that everyone should be pulled over, but getting pulled over is a chance game.If they want to save lives, leave the %age issue alone, leave the penalties where they are but beef up how many police are out on the highways and side roads.Make it more of a risk. Make the chance of getting caught higher. That is where you will see change.Patrol the main highways but also watch the "safe" roads.Side note: I am absolutely against checkpoints or blockades, you must have a specific reason to pull someone over.Speed up the duration of a drunk arrest, the faster they can go through them the more folks can be observed and checked.They swerve, pull them over, check L&R and request a breathalyzer if there is probable cause.Even if you pull a person over and they are near the limit (.07 or so) hopefully you will make the potential of getting arrested a reality.

Its the same issue with speeding. The more you do it without getting arrested or getting spooked, you are more likely to do it often.

Point Something Something has always been part of a system of subjective measures. The posters say X drinks of this type in an hour or Y drinks of that type in an hour will result in .08 and impairment, yet it varies from person to person. A glass of malbec with dinner pretty much puts my wife in a state where she shouldn't drive for example.

The rule for DUI should always be that the DUI itself is not the primary moving violation. It should be an escalator to whatever you were pulled over for. If you're driving impaired, you're likely going to be weaving lanes and the cops can always nail you for reckless driving, failure to maintain your lane, a rolling stop, failure to yield, whatever and pull you over. Then get you with a DUI on top of that.

For example a BAC of 0.09 and 5 mph over the speed limit is pretty much driving like a normal person, no DUI citation should be issued. That same BAC and rear ending someone or weaving between lanes, you should pick up the punishment for your infraction and an additional punishment for DUI on the grounds that you were driving poorly and we can make an educated guess that the booze in your system contributed to your farkup. The whole idea of some number in your blood stream being a firm point for a fine is bullshiat. I'd imagine there are people out there who are .09 are better drivers than some totally sober 16 year old and there are people who at .03 are complete shiatheads. Tie the DUI to some other moving violation based on actual vehicle performance.

The article says that changing this might save 500 to 800 lives a year.

We have more than three hundred million people in this country. Almost anything you do could end up saving that many lives. Five hundred is barely even a statistic. If the average person got 15 more minutes of exercise a week it'd probably save that many or more.

But I guarantee that way more than five hundred people will have their lives ruined by blowing a 0.06 if these regulations pass despite the fact that they would be fine for driving at that level. This despite the fact that pretty much everything indicates that the accidents are generally caused by people that are way above even the 0.08 limit we have now.

Well, you advocate for that one extra step to reduce it even further. The alternative is irrelevance or even death as an organization. And organizations like that don't like to die.

Did you know that the Woman's Christian Temperance Union is still around? Yes, 80 years after the repeal of their signature legislation, they are still around.

What gets me is that when you consider drunk driving related accidents have gone down by half in raw numbers, as a factor of fatalities per road mile driven per year, it's down way more than 50%. It's also way down as a factor of total highway deaths, even though NHTSA considers any crash alcohol related if there is -any- detectable amount in the blood. Sober guy T-bones a cab hauling a drunk home from the bar? Alcohol involved fatality.

So, even with the number fudging, deaths are way, way down from what they were when MADD got started. I'm not saying it needs to be legal again, but you've got to wonder what the agenda really is when they keep pushing the limits lower and lower.

Since studies have shown the dangers of drunk driving to be about the same as texting while driving, I now find it impossible to hate on drunk drivers the way the government PSAs say I'm supposed to. One guy gets a ticket, maybe, and the other woman loses her license, goes to jail for the night, gets her name in the paper, and has to pay thousands of dollars in fines if she ever wants to be able to drive legally again.

Also, if we were serious about safety, we wouldn't ticket and arrest drunks who clearly choose to sleep it off in the back seat or passenger side rather than drive. This bullshiat about "if you have the keys you could start the vehicle" is farking A ignorant. I have a dick, so I guess I could be a child rapist too....

I'm going to have to throw airbags, seat belt laws, kids-in-the-back campaigns, and safer cars into the equation. Anyone got a graph that accounts for those safety improvements?

Somewhat off-topic, but remember back in the 1970s, when Nixon enacted the national 55mph speed limit "to save fuel?" But then, without much really solid evidence to back it up, when the fuel crisis eased, they made the "temporary" reduction in speed permanent because "speed kills."

A major publicly-funded study quite a few years ago found actually that speed, on its own, doesn't kill, it's having people at a mix of speeds on a common uncontrolled-access roadway. FHWA and NTSB didn't like the report because it disagreed with 'speed kills,' so it basically got shiatcanned for years and is fairly hard to find now.

Well, over the years, highway deaths dropped some, so the 'speed kills' crowd claimed victory, but then the realists came back and said, "man, I'm sick of wasting my time dawdling across West Texas at 55mph, let's get rid of this."

What led to the drop in highway deaths? Better CARS. Airbags. Tougher passenger compartments. Better crumple-zones. Mandatory use of three-point belts. Mandatory restraint laws for children. And to some extent, better enforcement of EXISTING alcohol-impairment laws. All this when states commonly had limits of .10, .12 or even .15.

OK now, why are deaths increasing again? Because there are more humans in more cars out there, and at least in part, because the population is aging. Old people get killed at a phenomenal rate, right up there with teenagers and new licensees, because their reactions are shot, they often don't like driving with a seatbelt, and they often drive slower than the flow of traffic, creating exactly the mixed-speeds hazard that that long-ago traffic study warned against.

Informally, when I note a local death in an alcohol-involved collision, I see if they post the BAC. Not once have I seen one in the last three or four years that wasn't at least .12, and in one case, .31. In other words, the problem with people driving fuuuuuuuuuuukduuuuuuuuuup is still there and probably always will be. There is no "problem" with people between .06 and .08, or for some, maybe even .10, except the "problem" is perceived to be that the government isn't taking enough of their money and writing enough tickets to justify all the new cop equipment they wanna buy.

There's an entire DUI-industrial complex of lawyers, judges, "substance abuse" counselors and probation officers built on the MONEY gotten from the whole system. It's never about "justice" except in truly egregious and fatal cases. Never. They want your money, and this is another way for them to take it.

See also, "this is why driverless cars will never, EVER be legal in the United States, because it'd remove the main way police and governments fark with your typical citizen."

In Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, there is a 0% rule. And daily random checkpoints around the city. Yes, it helped reduce drunk driving, but a lot of collateral damage as well. People have gone to jail and lost both their car and licenses for cleaning their mouth with Listerine.

That would accomplish absolutely nothing....except ruin the lives of even more perfectly safe drivers who aren't even actually drunk. This nanny-state of ours needs to lighten up and have a beer or two.

Oregon DUI as an Oklahoman: About $6000 for one night in jail plus court plus the resulting fines and incidental costs, 90 day driving ban that only covered driving in Oregon, 15 months court supervision and sobriety, 6 of it in outpatient rehab and AA, and ultimately expunged. Did not count on my Oklahoma driving record because of a lack of parity with the DUI laws between states, so no points on my license and my insurance didn't go up. Judge told me, "For doing what is clearly the dumbest thing in your life, you managed to do it in the smartest possible way, because you know and I know if you had an Oregon license or you were at home, things would have been much worse."

/First time, last time.//Wouldn't recommend it.///Should have trusted my gut, not my "friends."////Sad thing is, that's the best thing that happened to me in Oregon in the last 10 years.

This is an amazing idea, if we make it illegal no one will ever do it, we won't even have to patrol anymore because everyone will know it's illegal. Safe at last!!!!! Now I can finally drive around without fear of being crashed into by a DUI driver... said no one ever.

I also wonder what the revenue increase is expected to be from that? My favorite part is where they lay the perfect trap for you. They take away your DL, and fine you $5,000, then demand that you use the flawed public tranist system to get to your job....you know that one you didn't use before when you got the DUI because it doesn't actually go to the places you need/want to go or is so slow that it takes 3 hours to get from point A to point B.

Dr.Fey:doofusgumby: Know 2 people who got DUI s AT HOME. And didn't drink until after they got there.

I just don't believe this. No DA would file - there's no way to beat the reasonable doubt if this went to trial, and no DA wants to lower his or her conviction rate.

Case 1: female, gets home sober. Has three drinks. Goes out to the car to get something out of the trunk. Cop pulls up and says there was a report about a suspected drunk driver in the neighborhood. Makes her blow after running her licence and finding she had a prior. She can't afford a $3,000 lawyer, pleads no contest. Dumb I know, but that's the breaks.

Case 2: Male, was sober and parked on the side of a main street. High speed chase goes by, CHP sideswipes his car, CHP continues chase. He calls CHP to find out what he should do, they make him wait a couple hours before saying go home, an officer will come by when available. He goes home, waits. Couple hours go by, he has a couple beers. CHP shows up, arrest for DUI with enhancement for damaging a cruiser. He gets a lawyer and fights, loses.

DUI in and of itself should not be illegal. Well, let me clarify that. Driving recklessly while drunk should be severely punished. If you're driving recklessly, get pulled over, and you've been drinking? The book should be thrown at you. Your punishment should be far greater than the current DUI punishments.

But punishment for just blowing over the limit, e.g. at a DUI checkpoint, or when officers hide just outside of bar parking lots to pull people over? Fark that. That's the part of it that's revenue generation, and that's the part of it that's an easy excuse for cops to perform warrantless searches.

So how long until the NTSB requires that all cars in the US come with ignition interlock devices, whether or not the owner has ever been convicted (or even accused) of a DUI? MADD has called for that; and it's for the children, after all.

Which is why self-driving cars won't make a bit of difference. Hell, they'll slap you with a DUI for sleeping in a parked car now, what makes you think they won't if you're in a self-driving car that's on the road?

Not just for sleeping in it. For being anywhere near it with keys. Even at home. Know 2 people who got DUI s AT HOME. And didn't drink until after they got there.

I contend that after a few days or weeks in a submarine where you aren't drinking your resistance to alcohol is much lower than an acomplished alcoholic's daily training diet and perhaps 3 or 4 drinks might be a substantial buzz to you. Our alcoholic has spent lots of time and money honing his system to consume much more than that amount. I feel there should be some kind of reaction and skills test that would also weed out the senile or dangerously stupid drivers and not a pure % test.

My judgment, based on my personal observations, is that they don't need to lower the limit from 0.08. They need to take steps to prevent people from racking up 2, 3, 4, 5 or even more DUIs and still get out of jail 30 days later and get arrested the very same freaking night doing it again. I also think they need to push aggravated DUI when you're way over the limit, like .12, and if you have multiple aggravated DUIs, it's a long prison term.

And the people who rack up 4 or 5 DUIs are almost guaranteed to be the ones blowing .15 or higher. So drunk you can't even stand up.

Nailing people for a DUI when they've had two beers will not go well with the rank and file. The goal should be to take dangerous people off the road, and I believe those are the people who habitually get plastered and drive, no matter how many times they get arrested.

Grand_Moff_Joseph:Me: Makes sense, which is exactly why they won't do it. Having a beer with dinner is going to be as black and white as having 1 gram of weed in your house, or catching two minors having sex in their dad's car. You'll do more jail time and suffer more long term consequences than the thugs who shot up the parade in NOLA last weekend.

It makes good sense. The main issue: MADD. They are now a neo-prohibitionist organization. They've totally lost focus of what they had set out to do.

I have a friend who went into a crazy downward spiral and had three DWIs in a span of ~20 months. The first one was comparatively minor, the second one resulted a minor car accident, and for the third he blew a 0.40, nearly caused multiple accidents by veering into oncoming traffic, and tried to run from the cop WHILE cuffed, resulting in a chin-first fall and a shattered jaw. The local news article listed the charges as:

one count each of:driving while intoxicatedaggravated DWIdriving with a blood alcohol content of 0.08 percent or greaterdrinking while driving (emphasis mine)third-degree escape

and two counts of:failure to keep right

Ultimately, he only had to spend a month in rehab and pay a shiatload of fines to get his license back. IMO, he should have permanently lost his driving privilege after the second DWI, let alone the third. A 0.05 limit is not going to make the roads safer, it's just going to generate a lot more revenue in fines. Start throwing the book at real drunk drivers (like my friend) and maybe the roads will be safer.

sammyk:PowerSlacker: Throw the book at the people who exceed .08 instead.

Even that is a little low. It used to be .10. A lot of people, myself included, felt that was just a money grab.

It used to be .15 in lots of states because that's the point at which lots of people have obvious problems with physical coordination, e.g. their gait is unsteady and their speech is slurred. People who are involved in DUI collisions or who are stopped because an officer observes improper driving (e.g. weaving, speeding, or driving erratically) still by-and-large have BACs north of .15. DUI roadblocks exist because it's very difficult to catch people who are in the .08-.10 range through observation of improper driving.

As far as people who are stopped in the ".15 and up" category, those people subdivide into two broad classes:1) First-time offenders in their late teens through mid 20s--essentially "Young, dumb, invincible, think bad things only happen to someone else."2) Hardcore, repeat offenders who are probably alcoholics.

You can't do very much about either of these categories, because you can't fix stupid (in the first case) except through experience, and an alcoholic won't get sober until and unless he or she wants to. However, the relevant authorities need to be seen as Doing Something so the easy answer is to keep ratcheting the DUI limit downwards to the point where it screws social drinkers.

Yes, .05 is a common limit in Europe--however, that is also a place where there are viable alternatives for getting home from the bar other than driving your own car or taking an impossibly expensive taxi.

brap:I take umbrage at the headline, I may be sauced out of my gourd, but I'm never too drunk to hail a cab.

Thing is, where a pretty large number of people live, there ARE no cabs. There are no buses. No trains. No anything, except private automobiles, because that's pretty much how this country developed. In Europe, where limits are often stricter, things are (a) closer together and (b) served by much better public transport.

BunkoSquad:Here's to living in a city with many bars in walking distance!

Indeed. I think a good chunk of the US problem with drunk driving has to do with our retarded approach to urban planning -- zoning all social destinations (to include the pubs) so far from private residences, there's really no choice but to drive in a lot of places. (Since, of course, we don't seem to know how to do public transportation, either.)

factoryconnection:dittybopper: Neoprohibitionists. They are working, slowly, gradually, towards zero tolerance. They know they can't ask for it all at once, because they will be laughed at. So they exploit the mechanisms of the slippery slope to achieve their goals.

MADD does fall under this category, and they seem to have all the free time in the world to bother legislators. God knows they don't have a social life.

And I say this as someone that is deeply committed to road safety and responsible drinking: dem b*tches be crazy.

The interesting things about organizations, though, is that like organisms, they don't like to die. MADD was founded with one goal: To reduce drunk driving deaths. By any rational measure, they've succeeded fantastically:

They've cut the raw numbers of deaths due to drunk driving in *HALF*.

The problem is, what do you do when you've won?

Well, you advocate for that one extra step to reduce it even further. The alternative is irrelevance or even death as an organization. And organizations like that don't like to die.

dittybopper:Neoprohibitionists. They are working, slowly, gradually, towards zero tolerance. They know they can't ask for it all at once, because they will be laughed at. So they exploit the mechanisms of the slippery slope to achieve their goals.

MADD does fall under this category, and they seem to have all the free time in the world to bother legislators. God knows they don't have a social life.

And I say this as someone that is deeply committed to road safety and responsible drinking: dem b*tches be crazy.

Neoprohibitionists. They are working, slowly, gradually, towards zero tolerance. They know they can't ask for it all at once, because they will be laughed at. So they exploit the mechanisms of the slippery slope to achieve their goals.

Alberta did this recently, lowering the legal limit from 0.08 to 0.05.

I have two friends who are police officers and they don't agree with it, stating that it's essentially useless. Why? Because people who cause fatal collisions aren't often in the 0.05 range, they're in the 0.20 range or above, or in other words, completely sh*tfaced. Lowering the limit to 0.05 does nothing to prevent that.

My police friends would absolutely agree with tougher sentencing. I've heard their stories from court on drunk drivers beating charges and it is absolutely appalling.